The road of life has its twists and turns, it goes up and down. When facing difficulties, people come in two types – and there are two types of choices. One type of person decides to gather their courage and move forward; the other prefers to escape, and give up! But in our age of advanced materialism, more and more people choose flight. Courage has gradually become a luxury, something everyone wants to have, but is afraid to face.

Life requires courage

Ji Xianlin, great teacher of Chinese culture, says this in “Eighty tales from the Heart”: I walked along Bright Sun avenue, and I walked over Solitary Wood bridge. Along the road were big ponds in deep mountains, and pleasant flat slopes; there were apricot flowers in the spring rain, and northern passes in the autumn wind; there were heavy mountains and repeated waves, and there was light beyond the tunnel; there was getting back on the right track, and unexpected rescues. The road was too long, the time was too long, the shadows were too many, and the memories too heavy. Along the thin lines of our lives, we will all encounter setbacks and difficulties.To cross these ravines and halls, we need the courage to face setbacks.

The science of life includes wide and eclectic knowledge, it is a process of polishing the will through the experience of hardships, a realm of poetic philosophy, natural and simple. You can feel life, think life, and remember life. Life does not only need you to take part, it requires courage, a kind of courage to live, a courage to endure the pain, a courage to face setbacks, a courage to overcome difficulties, the courage of going your own way and the courage to fight for happiness.

I remember the film “Mc Dull” : Mc Dull is timid, he flees, but he also dreams, and has courage. Simplicity and innocence, generosity with others, ongoing efforts to learn, and the courage to face enemies, even if the result is defeat. This, in fact, is what life’s really like. When you encounter something unfamiliar, it’s like driving a car on an unfamiliar road, who won’t feel a bit shy. When you face life’s hardships, is like drinking water with food stuck in your teeth, who wouldn’t want to avoid it. When you face the perspectives of life, it’s like seeing a mirage in the sand, who hasn’t had a dream about that. When you face opportunities in your life, it’s like three minutes of heat, everybody will try hard… although for all purposes, even after such efforts, life does not change much, because there are no miracles — what’s most precious about McDull is that, even after experience such hardships, he can still laugh about life, and after an extraordinary adventure, just goes on living. This is a kind of wisdom: ups, difficulties, restorations, despairs, look at it in the face, and what life send you, smile at it.

Facing difficulties requires courage

An eagle, to teach the newly born eagle to fly, takes it to the edge of a cliff tens of meters high, and cruelly pushes the little eagle off. The panicked eaglet flaps its wings desperately, while shouting out a sharp howl. However, a miracle happens, and the little eagle that didn’t know how to fly finally finds itself able to fly.

When you stand in-between two steep mountains, and raising up your head, you only see a thin streak of blue sky or no blue sky at al, and in front of you is a sinister enemy, or a dark bottomless abyss or deep hole, what can you do? Apart from mustering courage, and fighting to survive. And in fact, what you see in front of you may not be that dangerous, this is only an appearance, so do not start by getting yourself scared. Remember what happens when you drive a car inside a tunnel? When the car first gets into the tunnel, all you see ahead is pitch dark, but after a while, your eyes get used to the darkness, and slowly, you realise that you can clearly see what’s inside the tunnel, what obstacles can be avoided, which track leads nowhere, where there’s a pitfall, you can see all of that. And so, when you encounter difficulties, the most important thing is to have the courage to face them, have the courage to make the first step towards solving these difficutlies.

Happiness requires courage

Happiness is a form of courage. As the song goes, ‘love really needs courage’! If you want to live with happiness and bliss, if you want to get the love you deserve, you should first learn to let go of your empty feelings! You shouldn’t let it lock up your spirit any more! As long as you have courage, there is hope! Actually, all the hardships your courage faces on the road will brighten up your life, their presence will only make your life more beautiful, more meaningful! So, bravely discover the love inside you, pursue it, even if it makes you heartbroken and scarred, one day, you’ll be able to look back, and proudly say: “I kept fighting for love!”

In his book “Artificial courage”, the American Psychologist 罗洛·梅, talking about the situations that contemporary people are facing, says that you need to muster a lot of courage, because if you don’t, your life will seem meaningless and desperate. He distinguishes four types of courage: physical, moral, social, and creative. The first is physical courage. Your body can demonstrate the values of elegance and grace, the body can express the “inner beauty of the body”: what the Ancients called poise (修养). Second, when it comes to moral courage, we can understand it from two perspectives: one is to follow your own conscience, the other is to feel deep compassion for other people’s suffering. In a democratic and open era, people rarely get publicly persecuted for speaking out their mind. But we can’t deny that to tell the truth, you still need to gather courage. 这是就人与人相处时的互动方式与实际效果而言。I should be brave to open my heart and have the courage to change myself after knowing and accepting other people. Finally, creative courage means you’re brave enough to innovate. Creative courage is about discovering new forms, new symbols, new paradigms, and based on them, create a new society.

Life has many disappointments, life is a large expanse of sea, where storms are inevitable. When the storm comes, the brave sailor only needs to be full of the courage to survive, and no matter how terrifying the winds and the waves, he will go ahead, and finally return home safely; but the cowardly sailor, even before the really terrible storm arrives, has already lost the courage to survive, and is trip often ends on a failure. Sometimes, there are many things we think we cannot do, we see no way, but in fact, when you have the courage, and are willing to try, you often find out that the difficulties came mostly from the fear you made up yourself. If you just take a first step, you will find out that the so-called difficulties, impossibilities, unachievable, was actually not so.

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